12 - The Lost Beginning of The Jeaste of Syr Gaweyne and the Collation of Bodleian Library MS Douce 261

Summary

Neither the text missing from The Jeaste of Syr Gaweyne can be recovered nor the collation of MS Douce 261 ascertained by the usual means (that is, by comparison with a printed exemplar, and from the physical state of the manuscript, respectively). But, by conjunction, what evidence there is points to the loss of seventy-four lines of text from Gaweyne and to a collation of nine quires of eight leaves, plus one leaf inserted immediately before the ninth.

The longest of the surviving copies of the text known as The Jeaste of Syr Gawayne but more logically titled simply Gaweyne is the manuscript fragment of 541 lines that is contained on fols.15r–25v of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 261. Here it is preceded by The hystorye of the valyaunte knyght Syr Isenbras (fols. 1r–7v) and The tretyse of Syr Degore (fols. 8r–14v), and followed by Syr Eglamoure of Artoys (fols. 26r–48v), which carries the date 1564 within its large ornamental tailpiece. Like its formally exact counterpart, London, British Library MS Egerton 3132A, this little book is one of the most attractive collections of romances to have survived; it is written in an italic hand with thirty-two lines to the full page, reduced to thirty-one on five occasions (generally in conjunction with a large initial capital); to between six and twenty-four on three others (which, as the final pages of their items, carry varyingly elaborate tailpieces), and to anything between six and twelve on twenty-one others (where the page is dominated by one of the large coloured illustrations that are the most distinctive and attractive feature of the manuscript).